Documentaries @ SBS

Blood and Guts: A History Of Surgery (Ep 2)

Tuesday, 13th January 8:30PM AEDT (5 Part Series)
This five part series explores the incredible and diverse history of surgery.

Episode Two: ‘Bleeding Hearts’
This part begins with a patient about to undergo cardiac surgery. That surgery involved the dramatic acts of stopping her heart and draining her blood. But only 70 years ago, surgeons operated on every other body apart from the heart. The heart was seen as ‘untouchable’.

Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst

Tuesday, 6th January 10:00PM AEDT
In the early 1970s, as Americans recovered from the trauma of the Vietnam War and re-elected Richard Nixon as president, a story to rival anything created by Hollywood unfolded in California.

Blood and Guts: A History Of Surgery (Ep 1)

Starts Tuesday, 6th January 8:30PM AEDT (5 Part Series)
This five part series explores the incredible and diverse history of surgery.

Episode 1: 'Into the Brain'
‘Into the Brain’ is a fascinating episode which explores the advancements brain surgery has made in the past century. But it also questions the ethical dilemma of mind experimentation and if progress should outweigh the risks it can pose to human life.

Desperately Seeking Doctors

Starts Tuesday, 6th January 7:30PM AEDT (3 Part Series)
Australia has a chronic shortage of doctors and nowhere is this more evident than in the bush. Country towns right across the country are so desperate for a GP they’ve recruited doctors from lands as far away as India, South Africa and the UK. Overseas trained doctors have now become commonplace throughout the land – but how do these foreign doctors cope once they’ve arrived in the middle of nowhere? And, just as importantly, how do the locals in the middle of nowhere cope with them?

The Lobotomist

Sunday, 4th January 8:30PM AEDT
This is the gripping and tragic story of an ambitious doctor, the desperate families who sought his help, and the medical establishment that embraced him. The program features interviews with Dr Freeman’s former patients, their families, his students, and medical historians. It offers an often overwhelming look at one of the darkest chapters in psychiatric history.

Lunch With Madame Murat

Thursday, 1st January 7:30PM AEDT
Madame Murat’s is a family owned restaurant in the French village of Pomarède celebrating 100 years of business. One of the last ‘family inns’ left in operation, the family dinner menu is served to a paying clientele. The owner, Jeanne Murat has worked at the restaurant since she was 14. At 67, she and her eldest daughter Sylvie run Madame Murat’s.

Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story

Tuesday, 30th December 10:00PM AEDT
The story of Stax Records began in the late 1950s when Mr. Stewart, a white bank teller, and his sister Estelle Axton took over an old movie theatre in a Memphis neighbourhood, with plans to use it as a studio for recording country music.

The Doctor Who Makes People Walk Again

Tuesday, 30th December 7:30PM AEDT
A doctor in China claims to be able to make people with spinal cord injuries walk again through a controversial operation using the cells of an aborted foetus. Is he really a miracle worker, or is he just a maverick?

Germanic Tribes

Starts Sunday, 21st December 7:30PM AEDT (4 Part Series)
Germanic Tribes is a new documentary series beginning on SBS on Sunday December 21 at 7.30pm. The four part series deals with the mass migration of Germanic tribes at the very beginning of European history, while Ancient Rome raced towards inevitable collapse and a new political centre developed in Northwest Europe. This period, from the invasion of the Huns in 375 to the conquest of Italy by the Lombards in 568, is one of the most fascinating, significant and complex epochs in history.

Foolproof Equations for a Perfect Life

Sunday, 28th December 8:30PM AEDT
Every day we are required to make decisions about life, and according to some scientists, we generally make the wrong one. Luckily the same scientists that have identified the problem can also help with the solution.

The Night James Brown Saved Boston

Friday, 26th December 8:30PM AEDT
“When a great man is killed for no reason and he happens to be your friend, you feel the loss twice over.” - James Brown, April 1968. The morning after one of the most catastrophic moments in American history; the assassination of Martin Luther King America’s inner cities had begun to implode.

The Empire State Building Murders

Sunday, 21st December 8.30PM AEDT
“By the time you get this tape, I should be dead, too. They won’t let me live Jim. I know too much. I’m counting on you to rid the nation of this filth. I love you. You’re the only one I’ve ever loved. How many times in our lives do we really fall for someone? Once, maybe twice, if we’re lucky. Goodbye Jim.” Penny Baxter.

Long Way Down

Starts Wednesday, 3rd December 8:30PM AEDT (10 Part Series)
Ewan and Charley are back on their motorcycles and ready to take the Long Way Down. This ten part series follows the pair on an intrepid motorcycle journey from the northern-most tip of Scotland, down to the southern-most tip of Africa, Cape Agulhas.

The Biggest Chinese Resturant in the World

Starts Wednesday, 3rd December 8:00PM AEDT (4 Part Series)
This four part documentary series explores the inner workings of the five-thousand-seater West Lake Restaurant in the Chinese city of Changsha. With a service of more then 1000 waiting staff and serving up 1000 ducks, 2000kg of rice and 1100kg of chilli each week it is easy to see how this massive eatery has earned its place in the Guinness Book of Records as The Biggest Restaurant in the World, a plaque that hangs proudly on its inner walls.

Wall Street Warriors

Starts Friday, 5th December 7:30PM
“Wall St takes the brightest people and smashes them into the pavement on a regular basis.” Guy de Chimay – a Wall Street Portfolio Manager.

Wall St Warriors takes a timely and riveting look at the lives of those who work on the world’s most famous stock exchange. The forces that drive these diverse people during their stressful hunt for riches are laid bare in insightful, behind-the-scene glimpses of the beating hearts and minds of Wall Street.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial

Starts Sunday, 30th November 8:30PM AEDT (2 Part Series)
In 2004, the board of the public school in Dover, Pennsylvania ordered science teachers to read a statement to high school biology students suggesting that that is an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution called intelligent design – the idea that life is too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed by an intelligent agent. The teachers refused to comply. Later, parents opposed to intelligent design filed a lawsuit in US federal court accusing the school board of violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Counter Culture

Starts Friday, 5th December 8:00PM AEDT (6 Part Series)
In the six-part series Counter Culture, Canadian journalist Tyler Brûlé explores how the business of buying and selling, of branding and re-branding reveals the true culture of six very different countries.